Drawing from practice-based PhD research in dance, this article focuses on the use of materials in relationship to moving, being and creating in the natural outdoors as well as in the context of disseminating practice-as-research. It considers three examples of engaging with materials – frstly to embody material as a performer, secondly to handle and appreciate materials as companions for movement explorations and thirdly as allies in communicating research that deals with the ephemeral and experiential. Materials are considered not for an assumed truthfulness, but for the imaginative capacities they elicit when approached poetically.